Ruby Red Herring

by Tracy Gardner

  “Good. I think that’s smart. Where did he acquire the stone?”

  “Flea market,” Goldie said.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Goldie shook her head. “I’m not. The Munich outdoor market is very hit or miss; I’ve been. Renell obviously had better luck than I’ve had. If it’s real,” she added.

  “If it’s real,” Avery repeated. “Thank you, Goldie, for bringing us in on this. Micah and I will start right away, if that’s all right?”

  “That’s perfect, Avery. You’ll need to compare the jewel to Emperor Xiang’s medallion as well, at some point. Let me know when you’re at that stage and I’ll coordinate access for you.” Goldie slid a check across the counter top. “This should cover your initial costs.”

  Avery bent down, taking one more look at the jewel before Goldie carefully wrapped it back up and placed it in its locked case, which would then be locked into Acquisitions Pending storage in the north wing of the MOA until Avery and Micah returned in the morning. Today, she had research to do.

  Avery accompanied Goldie and the MOA security guards assigned to the new submission during transport as they walked to the elevator. On the descent, Goldie spoke up. “Oh, just so you’re aware, the museum’s entire south wing and a portion of the basement will be closed off for the next couple weeks. One of those superhero movies is filming some scenes here. It wasn’t up to me,” she added.

  “No worries. Maybe I’ll meet a real live movie star or two,” Avery joked.

  “You might,” she said. “You know, if the jewel is real, I daresay this acquisition will be quite a bit more exciting than the Persian textile collection you verified and appraised for us last month.”

  “Oh, absolutely.” Avery laughed, exiting the elevator and turning to head toward the lobby as Goldie and her guards went the opposite direction.

  “Grandmother!” Nate Brennan appeared, rounding the corner and catching up with Goldie with his long-legged stride.

  Nate nodded in passing at Avery. Goldie’s grandson was MOA’s associate acquisitions liaison, and Avery still wasn’t sure what she thought about him.

  Outside on the wide front steps of the MOA, Avery tipped her head back and basked in the warm sunshine, the sky bright blue after days of rain. Today was a perfect seventy-two degrees, her favorite weather to run in. Today’s strappy low heels would be replaced later with the pink-and-black running shoes she always kept in her bag—just in case. Running helped her think. It was one of the things she’d never been able to get Hank to understand—running was like solitary therapy for her. Having her boyfriend along defeated the purpose. No matter how she’d tried to explain it, he’d never really stopped taking offense when she refused to let him join her. She’d eventually stopped trying to get her point across.

  Halfway through the six-block walk to the Antiquities storefront, her phone rang. Sir Robert Lane and his photo appeared on the screen. Sir Robert wasn’t actually a sir—that is, a knight; it was more an affectation her parents had used to refer to their partner. Somehow through the years, it had stuck. Robert Lane was Sir Robert to everyone who knew him, and Avery had to admit, he did carry himself with a regal air.

  “Good morning!” Avery smiled as she answered his call, still feeling buoyant from handling the jewel that could potentially complete one of history’s most important artifacts.

  “Good morning to you, young lady.” Sir Robert’s voice came through the line. “I heard a hot rumor just now.”

  “Really? I’ve told you before, Brad and Jen are never getting back together.” Avery maneuvered through Manhattan tourists, doing her best to veer toward the right side of the sidewalk. She loved it here. The contrast between the bustling, energizing city and her relaxing Lilac Grove haven made her grateful she had the best of both worlds.

  “Funny. No. I’m calling about our new case. Did Goldie give you details? Did you get to see it? What do you think?”

  How was he always one step ahead of her? “Nate called you,” Avery guessed. She shouldn’t have been surprised. Nate seemed to have his hands in everything at the MOA. He was said to have dropped out of art school to mountain bike around Europe, and when his family money had finally been cut off, he had returned to New York and stepped into acquisitions a little over a year ago. Goldie’s grandson now sat on the board of directors. The man oozed an unjustified air of confidence and authority.

  “Yes, he called me.” Sir Robert chuckled. “He asked when I’d be in to take a look at the new bauble.”

  “Interesting. The great Nate Brennan doesn’t trust my expertise?” Nate was such a snake. “That’s rich, coming from a trust fund baby who only shows up to work when he feels like it.”

  “Now, it’s not like that. The kid can be a little excitable at times. I believe he’s just more familiar with me through Francesca.”

  “Right, right.” Avery rolled her eyes. Sir Robert had been dating the MOA’s actual acquisitions liaison, Francesca Giolitti, for the past year. At fifty-two, Francesca was a full ten years older than Sir Robert, but she hardly looked it. She seemed to constantly be working, either trotting the globe or coordinating the museum’s rotating collections, and always dressed as if she’d just stepped off a Paris runway. “Does Nate think you’ll be taking point on the assignment?”

  “Not at all,” Sir Robert said. “You know I’d much rather leave that end of things to you. Are you on your way in?”

  “Yes. I’ll see you in two minutes.”

  “I’ll put the coffee on,” Sir Robert said, hanging up.

  The door to the shop was sandwiched between the Manhattan branch of Shinola, a chic watchmaking company out of Detroit, and one of the city’s many coffee shops. Deep-gold Old English lettering in a curved arc on the glass door read ANTIQUITIES & ARTIFACTS APPRAISED, est. 2008, with the phone number and APPOINTMENTS ONLY in smaller lettering underneath. Approaching the shop now, Avery thought of all the changes the past year had wrought. She hadn’t been able to walk through this door since the accident without her parents at the front of her mind.

  Avery had been the one to organize the family dinner the night of the crash. Despite having a degree compatible with the family business, she had moved to Pennsylvania after college, determined to get some experience on her own. She’d found work with a company that handled insurance claims. She’d made a few good friends among her colleagues, but she hadn’t loved the job. Avery wanted to come home. When they met for dinner at Bello’s, she’d finally mustered the nerve to ask her parents if she might come work for them. Anne and William were thrilled. They all agreed she would move back to New York as soon as her lease was up. But fate made that happen much sooner than planned.

  Sir Robert and Micah kept the business afloat the first couple months after Anne’s and William’s deaths. Avery was nearly incapacitated by grief and guilt: If she’d left well enough alone and stayed at her job in Pennsylvania, there wouldn’t have been a family dinner. If there had been no family dinner, there wouldn’t have been a car crash, and her parents would still be alive.

  Aunt Midge found a wonderful therapist for her and drove her to the first appointment.

  In the past year, Avery had lost her parents and her boyfriend—her parents through tragedy and Hank through anger. Avery hadn’t been able to see anything clearly ten months ago when Dr. Singh began treating her. Now she saw that she’d lashed out at Hank, though he’d only been supportive and concerned; her anger had needed an outlet, and even in her grief-fueled fog, she’d kept Tilly and Midge in a bubble of protection. The demise of her relationship with Hank was the collateral damage of that awful night.

  But she was doing better now. Avery entered the little shop, and the bell over the door jangled pleasantly.

  Sir Robert stood waiting for the coffee to finish brewing at the buffet on the far wall. Micah Abbott was buried in paperwork at his desk, which faced Avery’s, a design they’d both decided worked well for collaborating on projects. The bare
red-brick walls and slightly uneven hardwood flooring gave away the building’s age, which—appropriately—infused the shop with a historical authenticity. The entryway and small reception area where she or Micah typically met with clients was an elegantly decorated space with a vintage brown leather Chesterfield sofa and chairs placed around a substantial old-world coffee table on a red-and-gold Oriental rug. More valuable items had rested on the coffee table at Antiquities and Artifacts Appraised than Avery could count.

  Avery took her seat, tucking a strand of chestnut-brown hair behind her ear. She’d inherited her mother’s long, graceful limbs and deep-brown eyes, while Tilly took after their blond, fair father. On the flip side, Tilly possessed Anne’s verve, her energy and habits, while Avery’s calm demeanor and endless motivation mirrored her father’s.

  “The assignment?”

  Avery looked up at Micah, jolted back to the present. “What?”

  “Tell us about the assignment. Nate told Sir Robert that a collector submitted a ruby as big as a golf ball!”

  Avery laughed. “Not quite! But it is stunning. If it isn’t genuine, it’s a pretty good fake. I don’t know anything yet. Nate told you what Goldie and I are thinking, right?”

  Sir Robert and Micah stared blankly at her.

  “Or not?” She looked from one man to the other. “This will sound crazy, but the jewel bears a striking resemblance to the Emperor’s Twins ruby.”

  Sir Robert gasped, his hand flying up to cover his mouth. Micah sat up abruptly in his chair, feet coming down off his desk.

  “The Emperor’s Twins? The missing ruby?” Micah was the first to speak.

  “Well, honestly, I hardly had a chance to look at it. We could both be wrong. I probably shouldn’t have said anything yet.”

  “How—” Sir Robert began. “How did it come to the MOA? Who submitted it?”

  “A private collector, Oliver Renell,” Avery said. “Do you know of him?”

  “I don’t. Amazing. This is simply amazing.”

  “You’ll want to see it,” she said. “Even if I’m wrong, it’s still a stunner.”

  She could see Sir Robert’s wheels spinning. “The lost ruby from the Emperor’s Twins medallion,” he mused. “Can you imagine? The exposure it would bring, not just for the MOA but for us as well . . .”

  He was lost in his dreams of fame. Avery could read his mind with no effort. “Or it could simply be a spinel,” she said, bringing him crashing back to earth. Spinels were much like rubies but far less valuable.

  He frowned at her. “Or it could be the ruby. You don’t know yet.”

  “It’s highly unlikely,” she admitted, feeling a little guilty she’d even shared the supposition. “It’s much more likely to be a well-done spinel. It’s happened before—of course you know of Henry the Eighth and the crown jewels. The Black Prince’s Ruby set in the front of the Tudor Crown was eventually proven to be a spinel.”

  “Of course,” Sir Robert said, “everyone knows about that. It took three hundred years for experts to discover that the jewel wasn’t a real ruby. But this isn’t some poor copy of the medallion showing up with two sparkling dragon eyes. It’s a large, seemingly good-quality gem that resembles the missing ruby, found in—where did you say the collector came to acquire it?”

  “The open-air flea market in Munich.”

  “Fascinating,” Micah said. “I’ve always wished to be the one discovering priceless artifacts at those places. The finds can be amazing.”

  “I’m just so happy Goldie brought us in on this,” Avery said.

  “When do we start?” Micah asked. He shoved some of the papers on his desk to the side, clearing a portion of his large desk calendar. His desk was as cluttered as Avery’s was meticulously neat. Whereas the surface of Avery’s was bare except for a laptop in the center and a few small color-coordinated boxes along one edge, organizing various items and mirroring the setup in her home office, Micah’s held stacks of folders, a bowl overflowing with a mix of paper clips, pens, and sticky notes, his own large dinosaur of a computer that he refused to replace, and torn scraps of paper with scribbled notes tucked everywhere. But Micah maintained that he knew right where everything was; he had a system, even if it didn’t look like it.

  “I told Goldie we’d start tomorrow morning. Sound okay?”

  “Absolutely.” Micah was already writing it down on his calendar.

  “Sir Robert, could you deposit the advance, please?” Avery handed him the check from Goldie. “You don’t mind holding down the fort here without Micah?”

  “Not at all. I’ve got to work on my pitch for the Barnaby’s meeting—it’d be great for us to land that auction house contract. And either way, rubbing elbows with that crowd is good for our reputation.”

  “It’s not a bad idea at all,” Micah spoke up. “Going for the Barnaby’s contract helps us, whether we win it or not; it increases our visibility, and if we get it, it’s guaranteed steady work.”

  Avery looked from Micah back to Sir Robert. He was right—they both were. She spoke to Sir Robert. “You’re right; go do what you do best. They’d be crazy not to give you the contract. Do you want to test your presentation on us?”

  Sir Robert handed a steaming cup of coffee to Avery, moving back to the buffet to make one for himself. “I would prefer not,” he said haughtily.

  Avery couldn’t help laughing. “Oh really! It’s that good?”

  He threw her a glance over one shoulder. “It will be.”

  Avery scooted her chair in and powered on her computer. “I have no doubt.” She smiled, exchanging amused looks with Micah.

  Chapter Two

  After dinner, Avery and Tilly sat across from each other on the family room floor, a Scrabble board on the coffee table between them. The contention of the morning was gone. Tilly had been waiting on the front porch swing with two lemonades after Avery’s evening run and informed her that she’d submitted her admissions essay. Neither of them acknowledged the elephant in the room, but that didn’t diminish the thoughts of William in the air between them now. The furry, elegant Halston snored next to Avery, his head propped on her leg. Aunt Midge peered around her newspaper at Tilly’s tiles; Avery saw one immaculately arched eyebrow twitch.

  Midge sipped her perfect Manhattan, plucking the Luxardo maraschino cherry from the top. “I wonder if anyone feels like a nice slice of baklava.”

  Avery frowned at her. “We don’t have any.”

  Aunt Midge used the toe of her feathered, kitten-heeled slipper to tap Tilly’s leg. “Yes, but still, some baklava would be delightful, wouldn’t it? Who doesn’t love a good, sweet piece of baklava?”

  Tilly gasped and quickly gathered up tiles, assembling them on the board in front of her. B-A-K-L-A-V-A.

  Avery pursed her lips and glared at Aunt Midge, then at Tilly. “Cheating! How is that fair, you cheaters?”

  Aunt Midge folded her newspaper and set it on the table beside her. She smoothed the hem of her bejeweled orange-and-beige tunic, rings sparkling in the light, and murmured, “I have no idea what you mean. This damn sweet tooth of mine.”

  Avery laughed, giving up. “You’re just lucky she’s facing your tiles, you snot,” she whispered to Tilly.

  Her younger sister smiled sweetly at her. “Your turn.”

  Avery shifted, studying the board. “Well, now I want baklava. You’re winning anyway.”

  Aunt Midge stood abruptly, and the Afghan woke, slowly stretching his large, lanky frame and standing as well. Aunt Midge on her feet this time of evening inevitably meant a walk, and Halston knew it.

  “It is a lovely night for a stroll, girls, don’t you think? We might luck into the last few pieces at the White Box before they close.” She left the room, returning moments later having swapped her slippers for her leopard-print Belgian soft-soled casuals.

  Aunt Midge slipped an arm through Avery’s as they set out on the ten-minute walk into town. Tilly walked ahead of them with Halston at her side. Lila
c Grove’s best and only bakery, the White Box, had a little of everything. Since Avery had returned home from Pennsylvania, she’d already gained five pounds, due mostly to the bakery’s cannoli and lemon cake. Her tall, lithe frame could fortunately handle the extra weight, but she knew she should start setting limits on her sweet tooth.

  “MOA is looking at acquiring the largest ruby I’ve ever seen,” Avery told her aunt. “Well, I’m not sure yet if it’s a genuine ruby. But if it is, it’s going to make headlines. It must be at least sixteen carats. The cut is unique—it gives the jewel this brilliant sparkle—and the deep, blood-red color is stunning.”

  Aunt Midge stopped walking. She stared at Avery for a moment before resuming her pace. At just five foot one—five three with her hair properly coiffed—the older woman had to tip her head up to look at her nieces now, something that seemed incongruous to Avery and Tilly, given petite Aunt Midge’s booming, Broadway-worthy voice and commanding presence. Avery had always thought Tilly had inherited her beautiful singing voice from Aunt Midge.

  “A sixteen-carat ruby? Oh my. That would be incredible,” Midge said, making a whistling sound.

  “We start the authentication process tomorrow. There’s a chance that it’s even more valuable than we think. Aunt Midge,” Avery said, lowering her volume now without even meaning to, “do you remember the Xiang dynasty display? It centers around the Emperor’s Twins medallion, with this fierce, gorgeous dragon with a missing eye.”

  Aunt Midge’s pace quickened. Avery glanced at her and noticed her brow was furrowed.

  “I know that piece,” she said.

  “Goldie thinks—we both think—that this jewel might possibly be the missing ruby, the dragon’s other eye.” She looked at her aunt as she stopped in her tracks again. “I know,” Avery said. “It would be a groundbreaking discovery.”

  “Yes,” she said slowly.

  Tilly had stopped now, half a block away from the bakery. She turned back toward them. “Hello? We are going to get baklava, aren’t we? They’re closing in a minute!” Halston had halted at her side, standing stock-still in his place.